{"id":15974,"date":"2025-10-24T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-geodesic-greenhouse-aims-to-ease-food-insecurity-in-vallecito\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T21:53:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:53:30","slug":"new-geodesic-greenhouse-aims-to-ease-food-insecurity-in-vallecito","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/new-geodesic-greenhouse-aims-to-ease-food-insecurity-in-vallecito\/","title":{"rendered":"New geodesic greenhouse aims to ease food insecurity in Vallecito"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Jim
Jim McCarroll volunteers his time helping to build a grow dome on Sept. 24 in Vallecito. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

VALLECITO \u2013 Less than three days after construction began, a 26-foot-tall geodesic dome greenhouse appeared on a fall afternoon as part of a community-driven initiative.<\/p>\n

The dome is part of a broader effort to address food insecurity in the Pine River Valley. Run by Pine River Shares, a community-led nonprofit focused on enacting social change in the valley, the new year-round grow dome will be maintained by volunteers and the produce will be delivered free to Vallecito residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to help a lot of people up here,\u201d said Chuck Freeman, a project volunteer.<\/p>\n

\"From
From left, Andrew Trujillo, with Pine River Shares; Mike Swift, a volunteer; Joey Martinez, with Willis Contractor; and Austin Willis, owner of Willis Contractor, set up a grow dome Sept. 24 in Vallecito. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The greenhouse reportedly escaped damage during recent flooding in the Vallecito area, which forced the evacuations of 390 homes. What comes next for the project \u2013 as the community regroups \u2013 remains up in air, Freeman said.<\/p>\n

On the build site\u2019s final day, a mix of contractors and local volunteers happily buzzed about the site with the purposeful energy of an ant colony \u2013 working toward a goal that wasn\u2019t immediately clear to outside observers.<\/p>\n

The upbeat mood reflected more than the end of a long workday \u2013 the project has been more than two years in the making.<\/p>\n

Freeman estimated that once the greenhouse begins producing, it will easily support 20 to 30 people.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m imagining all these neighbors \u2013 and everybody that has helped \u2013 being able to eat and get fresh vegetables out of this instead of traveling 30 minutes, 40 minutes to the store,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Food insecurity has become a pressing issue in La Plata County, where about 20% of residents eat only two meals a day, Freeman said.<\/p>\n

Many of those affected live in the Pine River Valley, where incomes are lower than in more urban areas and rising grocery prices push locally produced food out of the community. Instead, some of the food is exported to wealthier areas like Telluride, Freeman said.<\/p>\n

\"Willis
Willis Contractor and volunteers work on building a grow dome on Sept. 24 in Vallecito. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The greenhouse is one key step toward addressing the issue.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pine River Shares received $390,000 in American Rescue Plan Act money through La Plata County for its Field-to-Fork program.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s kind of when this all started,\u201d said Andrew Trujillo, a Bayfield-based farmer, veteran and volunteer. \u201cWe started visiting the communities and seeing what they wanted. And two years ago, we landed on the dome and started to try to find a space for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The dome now sits on a patch of land with year-round sun exposure on Terry Shear\u2019s property in a Vallecito neighborhood.<\/p>\n

Shear offered his land for the project because, as he put it, \u201cI like people. I like teaching folks, and I had the space \u2013 so why not?\u201d<\/p>\n

He was jovial as the project neared its end \u2013 reaching the finishing line required numerous community conversations and navigating bureaucratic red tape.<\/p>\n

Pine River Shares operates through collective, community-driven advocacy, with no single person designated as project leader. This meant the Vallecito volunteers engaged in many discussions \u2013 some more fruitful than others, Shear said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll tell you, some of our meetings people were disagreeing, butting heads,\u201d he said. \u201cOnce everybody got out here, though, it was different. There\u2019s so much ownership. We\u2019ve been trying to do this for years, and now that it\u2019s finally clear, people haven\u2019t had time to disagree with each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Construction was a feat of collective effort. Normally, said contractor Austin Willis, building a geodesic dome takes him and one employee about 32 hours. With 10 Pine River Shares volunteers working alongside him, the Vallecito project wrapped up in just 19 hours.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve had a really amazing team of volunteers,\u201d Willis said. \u201cThis has been more hands-on deck than we could really use at times. They just flew right through it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Joey
Joey Martinez, with Willis Contractor, works on building a grow dome on Sept. 24 in Vallecito. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

For Pine River Shares, the dome is part of a broader vision: creating a sustainable food shed in the Pine River Valley \u2013 from Vallecito southward \u2013 to ensure healthy food remains in the community.<\/p>\n

Now the greenhouse is built, but the plan for the working greenhouse remains unresolved.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe never thought that we were going to get this thing done,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cNow that we\u2019re here, we can start sitting down and deciding, \u2018OK, what exactly do we want to do?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\"From
From left, Andrew Trujillo, with Pine River Shares; Mike Swift, a volunteer; Austin Willis, owner of Willis Contractor; and Jim McCarroll, a volunteer set up a grow dome on Sept. 24 in Vallecito. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

It remains unclear which crops will be grown, but tomatoes and cucumbers are strong contenders for the year-round garden.<\/p>\n

Also under discussion are raised planter beds, to reduce the need for bending \u2013 many volunteers are retired \u2013 and the construction of an outdoor garden plot for summer growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut who knows how this is going to evolve,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cWe have lots of flexibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

jbowman@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Year-round production expected to feed 20 to 30 residents<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[281,1435,28,1500],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-agriculture","tag-food-insecurity","tag-headlines","tag-vallecito"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15974"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19946,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15974\/revisions\/19946"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15974"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}